My family recently uncovered dozens of clearly struck soldiers who had met my mother at the Red Cross in Rome in the last months of the Second World War.
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Beth November / NPR
I had the impression of finding a treasure for a long time.
A box had been forgotten in my sister’s basement for decades. The services of soldiers clearly struck in Rome met a file within a file inside 43 letters of clearly struck soldiers who had met my mother in Rome in Rome. In addition, to our astonishment, the comments cards that mom had written on each guy.
If she had not died for a long time, Mom would have reached the bar of the century this year, which means that she obtained some of these letters when she was only 19 years old. And the soldiers who wrote it would have been of this age.
Worthy of gossip? Emotionally loaded? No way of knowing it without reading them, so my sister Juanita, her husband, Mark, and their sons Forrest and Aaron, gathered in my dining room to dig.
According to today’s standards, these biggest generation guys are practically calligraphs – swirling cursive script, straight lines even on paper not no.
Beth November / NPR
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Beth November / NPR
The first thing we noticed about letters, written on super luminous air paper, is that, according to today’s standards, these biggest guys from the generation were practically calligraphs – swirling cursive script, straight lines even on non -helical paper. Beautiful calligraphy, without necessarily writing skills to match.
A guy, Frank, begins each letter hoping that it will find my mother “in the best of health”. Then he tells him where he writes – the mess, let’s say – and what he looks like.
Others are more fun. Ed, for example, begins a joke of the mother’s first name. She was born in Panama, and “Omah” had to throw it momentarily when they met. “Dear Homaha,” he wrote, according to, “I didn’t think I could remember how to spell the above.”
My mother (dress in the center printed) celebrating the Allied victory on May 5, 1945, the day when Germany went, ending the war in Europe.
Bob Mondello
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Bob Mondello
Fifting mom’s comments cards, my sister is looking for hers. “Edward”, she reads. “I met him at the APO. A very nice boy. We still have discussions in a way. He is 28 years old.”
It was old. Most of her correspondents looked more like James, whom she noted, “will be 20 years old in October”.
Romance in the social clubs of the Red Cross
Rome had been released by the Allied forces a few months earlier, and the Red Cross, where mom worked, sponsor clubs for soldiers – table tennis and dances almost every evening. Mom was young, with brow hair and without attachment, and she seems to have had a lot of contenders, some leaves like Charles: “I hope to see you again”, he wrote, “but until I do it, it bothers you if I fall in love with you?”
Others, including James, were less smooth. “I wonder how many times should I ask you before I have an appointment?” He writes plaintive.
Seriously sweet, these guys and full of surprises, even in their signatures. Tommy, for example, loops the “y” when he signs and puts a smiling face in the loop.
“He was ahead of his time,” smiles my nephew Aaron, amused by the family history lesson. “I don’t just browse,” he radiates, “I really appreciate.”
He is not alone. She is a mother whose sister and I did not have a soup. When I asked our brother Steve what he knew of mom during the Second World War, all he could find was “She played Pingpong?” – What makes sense because in the family tradition, this is how she met dad. But she met Dad in New York, years later. And she died before Forrest and Aaron were born, so it is a mother and a grandmother that we had never known, seen through her interactions with guys that she would never have been mentioned.
My mother kept notes on the soldiers she met. The first reads as follows: “I met him at the Corso Club on June 18, 1945 – a very good dancer, exceptionally good. His father is acrobat and he has a brother and a sister. He was about to marry an Italian girl but discovered unpleasant things about him.”
Beth November / NPR
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Beth November / NPR
My sister takes a comment card and luddy. “Ohhh, the Sgt. Bob”, she reads, with a quick glance in my direction. “I think I love him. Winky, hot, bob, cute.”
I have so many questions.
Classified on dance and pingpong skills
While Maman met these guys in Dances, which she mainly kept was their potential Fred Astaire. From Ricky, she notes: “When he dances, he likes to dive.” She also cataloged their prowess at table tennis. “Guy”, she writes, “Play ping-pong, but I beat him.”
This loss seems to have submitted to Guy’s skin because a few days later, he wrote to him, asking for a revenge match: “Each time you feel lucky, just and we will settle it once and for all. This time, I will forget, temporarily, you are a lady. PS seriously, I think you are a very good player, but don’t think I’m just a little better !!!!”
A newspaper cutting out one of the clubs where mom danced and played Pingpong with the soldiers who wrote to him.
Beth November / NPR
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Beth November / NPR
“Better to have loved and lost …”
Mom saved a more serious letter. He is dated “two days after Christmas” and was a commander, which means that he would have been at least 35 or 40 years.
Omah Perino, 1944, 1944.
Bob Mondello
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Bob Mondello
“Someone, somewhere one day said that there was no crazy like an old fool,” he begins, “… and I said once I was never going to fall in love again. I did it quite well too, holding my resolution, until last July. It was at this time that I came to Rome …
In the coming months, he returned again and again, he wrote. They met. He had a goldsmith made came offes that he thought she would like. She gave him the “medicinal” cognac when he had a cold. He continues for three pages on the way he debated to tell him what he felt, but thought it would be selfish. So, he continued to come back to the front without saying anything … in anxiety.
“I was so in love with you,” he wrote, “that I couldn’t sleep at night and I took food as a question of course.”
Deciding to be selfish once and to say what he thought, he returned on Christmas day 1944 to see her.
“But this trip to the club,” he wrote, “was there that I was drunk. I saw you with the background of all these boys by looking at you so admiring. And the SGT. Who loved you. And how happy you were. Well … I pinched to wake up my dreams.”
He quotes a little of Tennyson – “Better to have loved and lost than never having loved” – and says that he returns to him “to your own generation”. Then, he asks her to forgive him for slipping in Naples without calling him, saying: “I just want to see you as I dreamed, not in farewell.”
The war ended a few months later, and by the next Christmas, Mom was at the Barnard College in New York, where she met a law student from Columbia about her age named Tony Mondello – at a Pingpong table.
And yes, he could dance – it was probably the clincher. As we grow up, when Maman and Dad went to the dance floor during the holidays, their friends have always retreated to watch.
So, in a way, I guess we know the mother to which these guys wrote – we did not realize or do not remember after all these years.
Isn’t it like a mom to give her children a reminder.
My mother’s photo album.
Beth November / NPR
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Beth November / NPR
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